Ash, there you go again! Never say die, on OIF being an illegal disaster, even though the entire sequence of events has been explained to you over and over and over. It’s like talking to a fence post.

Okay, quickie, check out Iraq’s economic metrics, you know, currency, GDP, new business starts, personal income, employment, you know, the health chart.

Also check the newspapers –a free and independent Iraqi parliament is debating the timeline of how much longer their brand-spanking new constitutional democracy will need American military assistance.

Also, for a change, why not consult an Iraqi –rather than your own flash-frozen political prejudice –on OIF?

Also, refresh yourself on the history (which even tho behind us, still exists)of Iraq and the region and the UN and oil-for-food and some major European governments under Saddam.

Also, after the brush up on the history & the current economics –recall Saddam’s policy on human rights. Yes, that, human rights, Ash, my selectively liberal correspondent.

Also, contrast & compare the west’s geopolitical position re the same little item –oil –that hmm, seems to be animating the military of at least one superpower not friendly to your –Ash’s –interests. Better for you, yes or no, with Russia/Saddam in the heart of the region? Without OIF, any chance that anti-western forces in the region would be undermining the open auction market that USA is trying to keep open, along with the sea lanes, for the free trade that’s now annually lifting a hundred million human beings out of poverty?

But I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I? You’ve got your moral-equivalence story, and you like it, so you’ll stick with it. But tha’s ok –enjoy yourself –we westerners are clearly free to be idiots if we want. For awhile longer, anyway.